New Delhi: In his op-ed column written for a leading English daily, former finance minister Yashwant Singh made scathing attacks on prime minister Narendra Modi and incumbent finance minister Arun Jaitley. Sinha wrote that he would be “failing in (his) national duty” if he did not speak up right now. He also claims that his views reflect the “sentiments of a large number of people in the BJP and elsewhere” and that these people aren’t speaking up “out of fear”.
In his column, Sinha calls the controversial demonetisation decision taken in November 2016 by Modi as “an unmitigated economic disaster” and says the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a “hurriedly-conceived and poorly-implemented” policy.
Sinha, a respected economist and former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, is also considered as one of the best finance ministers in recent times. His son Jayant Sinha won the 2014 elections from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand and is currently Minister of State for Civil Aviation in Modi’s cabinet.
In his piece, Sinha reserves the most scathing words for Arun Jaitley, calling him a “lucky finance minister, luckier than any in the post-liberalisation era”. He admits that Jaitley is believed to be the “best and the brightest” in the Narendra Modi government, and that the current finance minister’s “indispensability” was established when he was given four ministries after the BJP’s landslide victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
Jaitley still retains three of those ministries (with Defence now being handled by Nirmala Sitharaman), Yashwant Sinha notes. But, not even “a superman like Jaitley” can do justice to the task of multi-tasking between a portfolio that includes the demanding finance ministry, Sinha writes.
But Jaitley has made a “mess” of it, Sinha writes at the beginning of his piece. He squandered a golden opportunity when he took over the management of the Indian economy, Sinha goes on to essentially say. “Depressed global crude oil prices placed at his (Jaitley) disposal lakhs of crores of rupees,” Sinha says. “But the oil bonanza has been wasted and the legacy problems (stalled projects and bad loans) have not only been allowed to persist, they have become worse.”
A number of Opposition leaders from the Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Left later joined Sinha in slamming the Modi government over its performance in economy.
“Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister (Arun Jaitley) is working over-time to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters.” That is how the former finance minister ended the scathing column.
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